Former President Bill Clinton at a presidential campaign event for Hillary Clinton on Friday. The Clinton Foundation’s ties to foreign governments and financiers have long been fodder for Mrs. Clinton’s critics.Credit
Ty Wright for The New York Times

In April 2012, representatives from Qatar were apparently hoping to get “five minutes” with former President Bill Clinton while in New York to present him with a $1 million check for his foundation as a birthday gift from the previous year.

The foundation’s ties to foreign governments and financiers have long been fodder for Mrs. Clinton’s critics — chief among them Donald J. Trump — who contend that foreigners used donations to the foundation to curry favor with the Clintons while Mrs. Clinton was the country’s top diplomat.

Emails released this year from Mrs. Clinton’s time at the State Department showed that foundation donors sought and in some cases obtained meetings with department officials. None showed that Mrs. Clinton made decisions based on contributions to the foundation, and the Clinton campaign has said she never did.

Similar concerns were in the air in 2009, when Mrs. Clinton took office as secretary of state. So the foundation agreed then that it would ask the State Department to review donations from any new foreign government donors, or from existing donors that were looking to expand their giving significantly.

A State Department spokesman, Mark C. Toner, said on Saturday, “We do not have a record of a submission” from the Clinton Foundation related to a 2012 donation from Qatar.

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In a hacked email from April 2012 released by WikiLeaks last week, Amitabh Desai, the Clinton Foundation’s foreign policy director, wrote to senior foundation aides that he had recently met with ambassadors from several nations, including Qatar, while in Washington.

Referring to Mr. Clinton by his initials, he wrote that Qatar “would like to see WJC ‘for five minutes’ in NYC, to present $1 million check that Qatar promised for WJC’s birthday in 2011.” He also said that Qatari officials “would welcome our suggestions for investments in Haiti” and that they have “allocated most of their $20 million but are happy to consider projects we suggest.”

Qatar had donated to the foundation since 2002. The country, a tiny oil-rich Persian Gulf monarchy, has a complicated diplomatic relationship with the United States; it is an ally, but it has also been suspected of quietly supporting militant Islamic groups.

Clinton Foundation officials said Saturday that they did not have to clear the $1 million gift with the State Department because it was not a “material increase” from Qatar’s previous donation levels.

The claim, however, was impossible to verify because the foundation is not required to publicly report every donation it receives and has not done so.

“Qatar has been among our hundreds of thousands of donors who have supported the Clinton Foundation’s overall humanitarian work, including making lifesaving H.I.V./AIDS treatment available to millions of people in more than 70 countries, combating childhood obesity here in the United States and working to empower girls and women around the world,” said Craig Minassian, a spokesman for the foundation.

A version of this article appears in print on October 16, 2016, on Page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: Email About Qatari Offer Shows Thorny Ethical Issues Clinton Foundation Faced. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe